


Leaving Los Angeles

by fadeverb



Series: Kai and Mannie [15]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:09:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows Los Angeles is a stronghold of Hell. Sometimes work takes an angel there anyway. This time, it's Kai's turn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leaving Los Angeles

I'm actually parked, having an emergency Starbucks cup of coffee before I go--I need keep moving non-stop to get to my next appointment anywhere close to on time--when my phone rings. I set down the coffee to answer, and find from the caller ID it's not who I was expecting. "Morning, Kai speaking, what's up?"

"Priority job," says the Seraph, who as with most of her Choir gets right to the point. She's not my supervisor, but apparently I'm a loaner Ofanite in Lightning, so I've gotten mission briefings from her before. "We need someone extracted from hostile territory and delivered to the nearest Tether of Lightning." I blink at that, as it's usually "nearest friendly Tether" or even "nearest affiliated Tether" for fiddly stuff that Lightning doesn't want to pass around to everyone. "You're the closest Ofanite available with transportation and no Role. Where are you now?"

"Redlands," I say. Which is closer to Los Angeles than I'm comfortable with, but I had to swing through for a last-minute courier request, which is why I'm about to be late to my appointment this evening. At this rate I might not make it at all. "Where to and who do I extract?"

The address I get is even closer to Los Angeles, right on the western edge of Orange County, where most of the Habbalah in this area live. No wonder they don't have many Ofanim available for the run. "You'll be meeting by the tortilla press in the supermarket," the Seraph tells me. "Her name is Maria Fernandez, and she'll approach you. Don't ask her any questions. If you don't make contact within fifteen minutes of entering the store, turn around and leave, and report it. Make no disturbance, and if you're put into a situation where disturbance would result, turn around and leave. If anything in this pickup doesn't go according to plan, _leave_. Do you understand?"

"This isn't exactly standard procedure--"

"Kai. Do you understand these instructions?"

I frown at the phone, but say, "Yes, I get it. No disturbance, no questions, and leave if anything happens."

"Good. Now hurry," the Seraph says, and the line goes dead.

I gulp down the rest of my coffee, and call Mannie while I'm striding back to where I parked my motorcycle. He answers with a highly generic, "Hello?" Moving back to the corporeal has made him nervous, and I can't blame him, even if he is smack in the middle of a cluster of Lightning Servitors and Soldiers. A guy can only deal with so many abduction attempts before concluding that someone really _is_ out to get him.

"Hey, it's Kai. A job came up, and I'm going to be late tonight. Or might not make it," I admit, which annoys me to no end, because if so that's going to be the second scheduled visit in a row that I've had to cancel.

"Understood," says Mannie, and he means it; he's never had a problem with work coming before personal things. It's not that I have a serious objection either, because we make time for personal things, and work is important. But I regret missed opportunities to spend time with my best friend. Time may be infinite, but angels...aren't, necessarily.

I'm at the bike, and it's time to go. "I'll call you when I have a better ETA," I say, swinging on. This vessel is shorter than my last one, which can make stopping at traffic lights awkward at times.

A fractional pause. "Be careful," Mannie says, and hangs up before I can try to say _I will_ without making it a promise. We both know how careful I don't get when there's a goal ahead of me.

But not this time. Get in, grab the contact, get out, and nothing else. The Seraph was firm enough on this point that it doesn't even sound like the usual precautions taken when doing anything important near Los Angeles, which makes me wonder what's up.

I mean, on the one ring, Los Angeles is locked up tight when it comes to Tethers; if there are any angelic Tethers in the area, they're so secret I've never even heard rumors. Between the entertainment industry and the vast concentration of wealth, you get demons oozing out of the sewers in fancy suits and sunglasses, ready to take on the world. Angels who used to be demons stay far away to avoid meeting anyone they used to know, and the rest of us stay quiet when we're passing through to avoid drawing the wrong kind of attention.

But on the other ring, it's an awfully big lump of cities, with a lot of people, and even a high concentration of demons doesn't mean they're every other person on the street. Better yet, demons aren't great at picking up on who's an angel from a distance. If a Mercurian gets a good reading off a demon, we know who he is; if an Impudite does a good job of Charming an angel, well, the angel's out some Essence and might say something inadvisable. I've been through Los Angeles half a dozen times, and only had trouble once. Avoid making too much noise, and it's no more dangerous than anywhere else for passing through. For living there... that's another matter. I wouldn't try.

I'm lucky enough to be on the far end of the morning rush hour, so it's well under an hour at the speed I drive to get to the grocery store. I leave the motorcycle in the nearest parking space I could find, and trot inside. I hope this person doesn't have much luggage; my bike's a sweet custom Lightning job, but two people won't leave room for anything bigger than a backpack.

I can smell the tortillas before I've stepped through the second set of doors, a warm wave from the back of the store. Shelves of the fascinating, mysterious world of food sweep past me as I head towards the source of that scent. It's a small effort of will to skip the shiny displays of caffeinated beverages. I wouldn't mind a drink for the trip, but going through the checkout line won't do anything good for what's supposed to be a rush job. I can always grab a cup of coffee from the Lightning Tether, because you can't find a Lightning Tether without at least one coffee maker, and half of them have espresso machines. The Word's nearly as bad as Trade about caffeine addictions.

At this time of day, the grocery store is lightly populated, the odd parent with a shopping cart and small children in tow wandering past the stockers in the aisles. This means it's not hard to spot the person I'm picking up. Late forties, in conservative gray slacks and jacket over a crisp white shirt. She's staring at the packs of gently steaming tortillas as if they might leap out and try to strangle her, her face locked into a rigid mask that's more of a giveaway than a worried look would have been. I wonder if she's an angel who got in too deep, or a demon taking a chance on running for Heaven. I'm not supposed to ask, so instead of giving any sign of recognition, I go stare thoughtfully at the tortillas myself. I'm not big into the spy stuff, but since I was told she'd contact me, I keep my patience and wait for her to decide she wants to get out of here. 

She looks over to me, mouth open to say something when she works up the nerve for it. Makes her look like a professionally-dressed guppy.

I have no idea what she was going to say, because that's when a young man throws an arm around her neck and points a gun at her head.

There's this problem with being an Ofanite: when I see something that needs to happen right this instant, I'm not prone to thinking, hey, maybe I should consider the long-term ramifications of what I'm doing and how well they match my ultimate goals in this mission. Which is why I'm doing a grab-and-tackle on the man's arm by the time I think, hey, wasn't I supposed to head in the other direction if anything happened? And isn't this sort of thing exactly what was meant by "not going according to plan"?

I'm going to get lectured by someone, I'm sure.

I don't have the leverage in this vessel that I did in my last one, a bit late for me to remember that. The gun's away from my contact and she's scrambling away, but I've only knocked the man back a few steps, not down. If I can keep the gun pointed away from her for a few seconds--

Gunfire is always louder than I expect, up close. I'm fast, but not faster than a speeding bullet, and not that much tougher than a high-caliber one. I hit the ground with a sharp pain in my right shoulder, flat on my back trying to get myself together again. Someone behind the counter at the tortilla press is screaming. I pull myself back to my feet just in time to see the gunman yank the woman I'm supposed to meet through a door to the back.

This would be an excellent time to turn around and leave before the wrong sort of people show up. Which is why I'm running after them. I'm going to get yelled at, I just know it, but I can't let some idiot with a gun drag off a person I'm supposed to give a ride, no matter what I was told. This is why I'm one of the people who runs around on the ground instead of making plans; I see the short-term and react, regardless of the long-term consequences.

Bleeding doesn't slow me down, only makes a mess of my shirt while my shoulder throbs. There are advantages to being in a vessel. I make it into the back room before the door's had a chance to swing shut, catch a glimpse of the two of them heading towards the door by the loading dock. More people starting to shout back here, but I don't have time to explain while running by. Is it wrong that I'm in a better mood, having been shot and getting a chance to chase someone down, than I was standing around waiting for a contact? Maybe not. It's an Ofanite thing. I could do without the part where my shoulder wants me to pay more attention to it. Definitely asking for a tougher vessel next time.

Dodging pallets gives the man ahead of me more of a lead, which makes no sense, given that he's trying to drag a protesting woman along while I only have me. Maybe he mapped the route ahead of time, while I have to deal with boxes as I come to them. (My resonance says this place is too variable to map me a route between boxes.) When I make it out the back door to the parking lot and loading dock, the white van's pulling away, side door hanging open.

I summon my motorcycle (best feature in a vehicle _ever_ ) and follow.

Two blocks later, I realize that I've violated both the "walk away if there's trouble" and the "don't make any disturbance" clauses in this assignment. I'd better get her back before I make it a three for three failure to get the job done. Pulling up my motorcycle doesn't make that much disturbance, but it was probably close enough for anyone in the van who can hear these things to realize I'm not an unusually concerned bystander. They would've figured this out anyway, so no sweat, right?

Definitely going to be yelling. And lectures. And penitential filing assignments.

The van slides through a red light in the middle of traffic, nearly broadsides a postal truck, and I have to swerve around the other side not to do that myself. It's been ages since I had a good car chase, and for all that I'm having trouble moving the fingers on my right hand, it's a lot of fun.

They're heading toward the freeway, where I'll have more trouble stopping them. I speed up, move around to the right. The door's closed now. Wonder if they've had the time to lock it. I edge in until my left leg's nearly scraping the van, and yank on the handle to the door.

That _does_ catch my leg when the door pops out and slides right open, sending me skidding away for half a second until I correct and pull back in. I swing myself into the van, unsummon the motorcycle before it can crash into something, and tackle the man in the back who's trying to keep the woman pinned. He has an arm busy with her, and so when he swings the gun towards me (looking surprised enough that it's gratifying, that he didn't expect _this_ ) it's easy as dancing to move in under that, slam his arm against the side of the van with enough of a twist to dislocate it. The man yelps, then again when the woman he's been grappling with finally lands a kick on his knee. She scrambles for the gun; I go for the driver in the front.

He's armed too? Doesn't that just keep things exciting. His first shot goes wild, right past me and out the side of the van, as it's hard to drive and aim at the same time. I can't have him shooting wildly into traffic; someone's going to get hurt. I drop down between the front seats, not much room to maneuver but plenty of access to, say, the stick shift. One more reason to prefer manual transmissions to automatics! It takes a nasty moment of trying to shove a hand past his legs, but there's the clutch.

We're going somewhere under sixty miles per hour; not that fast, but fast enough for surface roads. Shifting into reverse does _interesting_ things to the van's transmission, judging by the noise. It's enough to make me feel sorry for inanimate objects, by the sound of shredding metal coming from the van. The driver grabs at the stick--too late, I'm thinking--which gives me enough space to yank on the steering wheel. I can't see anything out the windshield, but as long as we're losing acceleration--

Oh. Wall. Or something like it. We're stopped now, and the driver's slumped over the steering wheel, bleeding, while disturbance rolls past me. Guess totaling the van was my fault, so the Symphony is holding it against me. The windshield has turned into a jigsaw puzzle of cracks, though it's been kind enough not to shatter. I'm not sure I can move my right arm anymore, now that it's been wedged up against the dashboard that hard. No time to worry about that; my left arm's enough to pull me back up, find out what's happening in the back of the van. 

She's holding the gun all wrong, dangling out away from her body like it might turn around and bite her. The gunman's curled up on the floor, clutching the arm I dislocated. I climb over his body, and try to offer a reassuring smile. "Would you by any chance be Maria Fernandez?" A hesitant nod, the gun aimed roughly at me. "Great. I'm your ride. Let's get out of here."

I have to offer her a hand before she'll climb out of the van. We're right between a freeway support and the van, barely out of sight of the oncoming crowd of gawkers. I call up my motorcycle before anyone can come back here to see it--it's not like the disturbance will make much of a difference on top of what I've already caused, though I'm going to get an extra set of yelling for vanishing it in public--and dig out a helmet for her, put on my own. I can still wiggle the fingers on my right hand. Good sign. She climbs on behind me under her own power, still shaking. "Hold on," I say, once her helmet's fastened, and get moving.

By the time I've hit I-15, the shivering behind me has stopped, transformed into a grip like a starving boa constrictor. It's not making the relentless throb in my right shoulder any less painful. When we get to the Tether, I'm asking for some healing, no matter how much I may have screwed this all up. This _hurts_.

The woman behind me leans forward, her helmet clacking against mine. "Pull over," she says.

"We haven't even passed 210 yet--"

" _Please_ , I need you to pull over."

I find the next exit, then a gas station where I can park. Before the bike's stopped rolling, she's sliding off, fumbling with the strap on her helmet. I lean forward to help her with the buckle. The instant it's off, she crouches down, and throws up on the pavement.

I put down the kickstand, take off my own helmet. "Are you okay?"

"No," she says, voice hoarse. "Does it look like I'm okay?" She has a lovely voice, even through the edge of near panic. No matter that she's wearing a suit that probably cost more than my nice pair of boots, she wipes her mouth on the back of her jacket sleeve. "They really tried to kill me. I didn't think they'd--I thought they wouldn't notice so _soon_."

"Technically," I say, "they tried to kidnap you. Trying to kill you might have progressed from there. These things happen, this line of work."

"Not in my line of work," she says, her breath still fast and shaky. "I'm not some, some _thug_ , I'm a doctor, I do respectable work--"

"Please, no details." I put up one hand. "Sorry, but I was told not to ask." It took me this long to realize I might be picking up a human. "We should keep moving. We're far enough from the crash that they won't converge on us yet, but they have ways of finding people. Ready to go?"

"I don't know," she says. She tucks her hands into her jacket pockets, jangling a set of keys there. "I don't know if I can do this." Her whole face sick, like she's never seen anything like this before. Maybe she hasn't. Not all doctors are the kind to work on damaged people. "Mother of God, you're bleeding..."

"It happens. I'll get over it." I rub the back of my neck, and watch to see if she's going to run. "Sorry about the blood on your suit. Not sure that's going to come out."

"That's okay." She sits down on the curb, hands shaking again. "I can't. I don't think I can do this. I don't know what they're going to do. I didn't think this through."

"Hey." I sit down next to her, helmet on my lap. "Take a deep breath, okay? Now. We have two choices here. One, we get back on the bike and keep moving. This was the original plan, right?"

"What if they catch up? These aren't--they're not even _human_ , they don't get tired, they just keep coming."

"I know." I take one of her hands, wrap mine around it. "I can keep going just as long, no fatigue making me fuzzy, until we get someplace safe. I've done this sort of thing before. Trust me."

Her eyes go sharp. "Angels are supposed to be terrifying," she says. "The hand of God on the world. Fear not, they said."

"For we bring you good tidings of great joy that will be unto all people, I know." I look down at our hands together, mine still bloody and all my fingernails bitten. Not very fearsome. "Different outfit, that one, and I need to keep this one on if I'm going to keep driving. I'll show you the other one some time if you want." What I want is to be moving right now, but I don't think I can get her back on the motorcycle in this state.

"You said there were two options." Her voice is turning more confident, sharper. It's great that she's getting her feet back under her, but it's going to be inconvenient if she turns argumentative. "So what is there besides going with you?"

"Forget running away, and go back home." I shrug. "Maybe you can convince them that you weren't planning anything, and it won't be hard to convince them that I swiped you from those other guys. I'm not sure what sort of evidence there is against you, but you might be able to get back to doing what you were before."

"You'd let me do that. Walk away."

"Well, I'm not about to give you a ride back if that's your decision, because _I_ need to keep moving. But if you decide that? I'm not going to make you go anywhere you don't want to. It's your choice."

She pulls a keychain out of her pocket, jangling keys attached to a fuzzy rabbit's foot. "Traditionally," she says, voice too even, "people sell their souls to Hell for wealth, power, and love. I just wanted to go to college. I didn't think it was so much to ask for." She turns the rabbit's foot about between her fingers. "I should have a rosary here. I haven't been to church since I signed that contract, you know. I was sure any priest could see what I'd done, if I walked into a holy place. Or that I might catch on fire."

"Not generally," I say. I'm so ready to move, to get on the bike, to keep going. I shift on the curb and wait for her to continue. Some things you can't hurry.

"Is it true?" She has fierce eyes, when she's focusing on me. "Saints and angels and the sacraments, confession and purgatory and heaven and hell, everything they told me in Sunday school. Is it all true?"

Like I'm going to lie to someone about that? "Most of it," I say. "Maybe differing on some of the details. Demons and angels you've met. Some of the rest you won't find out until you die."

"I sold my soul for a scholarship," she says, and laughs, a brittle sound. "Stupid child that I was. I know I'm going to Hell. It's too late to change _that_."

"You were given free will," I say, and stand up. "Your choices make a difference. It's part of being human. Are you coming with me?"

She stares up at me. Then pulls her helmet back on, and stands up. "Let's go?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

Not ten minutes down the freeway, I catch sight of flashing lights in my rearview mirror. We're not in Los Angeles proper, but still within the sphere of influence around that city. The police car pulls up behind me, lights flashing, and I pull over to the side of the road. Maria twitches as I turn off the engine. "What do they want?" she whispers.

"Don't know. If we're lucky, it's something mundane."

"If we're not lucky?"

"Don't take your helmet off yet."

The police officer who strides up to the motorcycle could have stepped out of any commercial advertising for fine young men and women to join the local force: he has an affable face, and doesn't walk with the strut some cops have. "Morning," he says, noting how I'm keeping my hands on the handlebars right in plain view. I've flipped up the visor on my helmet for more evidence of having nothing to hide. "Could I see your license?"

I dig out one of the two cards in my back pocket, and pass it over. It's a decent forgery, run off from a machine that can do thirty-eight states perfectly and ten more passably. It's also not attached to anything resembling a Role; it shouldn't turn up a thing on his computer. "What seems to be the problem, officer?"

He smiles at me. "Just a routine check," he says. "Something happen to your arm?"

"My little brother thought it was funny," I say. "But I can't afford a new jacket yet." The blood's mostly dried, enough to pass a casual inspection.

"Brothers," he says, and shakes his head. "So where are you off to today?"

"Off to see my parents in Victorville," I say, picking a name off the map in my head for something up ahead. "They finally got the pool put in, so I said I'd bring a friend by for the barbecue." Not that she's dressed for any sort of barbecue, but I can only come up with so much on the fly. Extemporizing is not one of my strong points outside of combat.

He nods, turning my license about in his hand. I can't remember if the state it's for is one of the thirty-eight or one of the ten. "Hold on here while I go back to the car and run this through the computer."

"Sure thing."

She leans forward as soon as he's in the car again. "Do you think he's stalling until someone can come?"

"Might be. Not sure yet."

"So why don't we run?"

"Because if we end up in a chase with the police, it's way too easy to spot a motorcycle in a sea of cars, they pull out the helicopters, and we end up having to ditch the bike and take to the streets looking for a new source of transportation before they catch up with us. So for now, we sit tight." I can sympathize; this goes against my instincts too, enough to make me fidget while waiting for him to come back. 

When the officer returns, he's still smiling, but he isn't passing my license back. "Computer turned up a flag," he says, so polite and apologetic. "I'm going to have to ask you to come back to the station with me to work this out. Might be nothing, but when the computer flags it, I have to follow procedure."

"I understand. Should I follow you back to the station, then?"

"If you would, please." He touches the brim of his hat, and returns to the car. The rest of the traffic is giving the right lane space for a hundred yards in each direction, and slowing down to only slightly above the speed limit.

"You can't be meaning to follow him back," she whispers to me, as I start the motorcycle up again.

"A police station this near Los Angeles? Of course not." I follow the police car at a polite distance. "Just hold on."

The police officer takes the next exit. I slide off into the exit lane right behind the car, slide back to the left as soon as that car is past the divider, and crank up the acceleration. This gives me a head start, but only until on him; he can radio ahead for cops from the upcoming towns to go for me. Maria's clutching again, head tucked into the back of my neck as I begin to show off this bike's potential for speed. Traffic's growing heavy again as the day winds towards lunch; I'd never be able to maintain this speed in a car. Fortunately, motorcycles are well suited to zipping in and out of small spaces.

Unfortunately, the cars to motorcycles ratio is high enough that we'll stand out the instant we're in sight of another police car. I take an exit back onto the surface streets, then find a nice out-of-the-way alley to stop. Smelly, but private. It'll do. "Time to find new transportation," I say, stripping off my bloody jacket. My shirt's just as ruined, but it's less obvious on a tie-dye shirt than on a blue jacket. Call it an artistic statement. I stuff the jacket into the compartment under the seat with my helmet, and vanish it all away as soon as Maria's helmet is stowed. "Now, I don't suppose you know how to hot-wire a car?"

"No idea," she says. "Surely it's not very, um, angelic, to steal cars?"

"Depends on who you ask." I scratch at the wound in my shoulder. Yup, still hurts. "I have cash for a taxi, and once we get sufficiently far away, I can call someone who has an actual car, or grab the motorcycle again."

She nods slowly, arms wrapped around herself. "What do we do if--"

I don't know what she was going to say. She takes a step forward, mouth still open, at the crack of a silenced gun, fresh blood creeping across her jacket and blouse. A second shot, not even aimed at me, and she's down on the ground, I'm fast enough to catch her before she hits but wasn't fast enough to keep her from being shot. I'm the one who's supposed to catch bullets, not the fragile human with one body to preserve before they have to give up on the world.

Maria Fernandez has wide, frightened eyes, like a child in the dark. I don't know what to do. I don't have any Song that can heal her, I barely even know first aid. Nothing that will help while she's bleeding here in my lap. Her hand grabs mine, barely strong enough to pull it away from her chest towards--I don't know what. I don't know what, and she stops pulling, eyes wide and blank.

"I can't shoot you in the back," says the man behind me, such a lazy, confident statement. If I had to judge by voice alone, I'd call him a Balseraph. The Symphony's sure this human has been killed by someone who shouldn't be mucking about on the corporeal, by the way it's clamoring around me. No more Hellsworn. "I mean, I could, but where's the drama in that? You might as well turn around and make a good showing of it."

"Didn't stop you from shooting her in the back." My hand clenches, and I hit the lump of keys and keychain in her pocket. I don't look up yet, only curl my hand into the pocket and pull those keys out.

"I can do what I want with my own property," he says. "If she wanted a prettier death, she shouldn't have tried to cheat her way out of a contract."

I stand up, and turn around. His suit's as crisp as hers once was, his hair's perfectly in place, and I'll bet that shiny car at the corner of the alleyway is his. This is the third time today that I've had a gun pointed at me. "Better," he says. "Did you want any last words? I expect nothing impressive from an angel stupid enough to show up in this territory, but for the sake of formalities, I ask."

"Heads up," I say, and my motorcycle appears again. Right over the arm holding the gun.

My Dad once told me, gravity's not the enemy. It's a boundary to work with, like the meter of a poem or the music to a dance. My bike follows the rules of gravity and drops down to the ground, right across that arm. I can hear the snap of bone before the crunch of the motorcycle hitting the pavement. More to the point, the keys in my hand are now a little more in tune with the Word of Creation, helping me say: no. Don't. Stop.

I'm too late. I'm much too late. But it's still immensely satisfying to beat that demon's face in before he can recover from his broken arm. By the time he's stopped moving, there's nothing left of his face. They'll have to ID him from fingerprints.

Doesn't matter much. She's still dead. I stand up with a bloody hand, and I don't know where to go now. Her keys are covered in bits of skin and muscle, the poor little rabbit's foot speckled in more blood. I wipe it clean on my jeans. Best I can do right now.

And it snaps off the keychain, dropping down onto the ground while one fuzzy bit sticks to the rest of the chain. I crouch down to pick up the part that fell.

It's a USB memory stick, shiny metal waiting to be plugged into some computer. That's what she was pulling me toward, even while she was dying--or maybe she wasn't, maybe she only wanted someone's hand to hold. I don't know.

The keys are in the BMW's ignition. I leave both bodies where they are, and drive back to the freeway. Time to find the nearest Lightning Tether.

#

Mannie's the sort of person who understands when I need to curl up on his couch and cling for a while. "You didn't do too badly," he says.

"I screwed up nine ways from Sunday. Disturbance all over the place, evidence strewn here and there, two bodies in an alleyway, and I didn't even get her out. Broke all the rules they gave me and still didn't complete the primary mission objective." I'm not sure Ofanim are supposed to cling, but that's what I'm doing and what makes me feel better. I'll go back to pacing soon enough. Right now where I need to be is curled up in his lap, with one hand moving through my hair, his way of telling me he's still listening.

"You got the data out, though."

"Yeah. Whatever it was." They thanked me for bringing it in once they had a chance to look at the stick, and then sent me on my way. Healed vessel, fresh set of clothing, and nothing more than that. I wish someone had showed up to yell at me. It might have made me feel better. My weekly report will look awful. "Presumably something they wanted. But I still didn't get _her_ out."

"She's the one who chose to take the risk," Mannie says. He knows all about taking risks, about deciding to run away from your old life and see if you can make it out alive. "It's not your fault."

"I could have been faster. Smarter. Something. I didn't even hear that demon coming up behind us."

"And maybe you could have ended up in Trauma, with her dead anyway. What's done is done, and you did your best." He lectures because he cares, and so I take it in the spirit it's meant. It's almost enough to make me feel better. But not quite.

"You know what the worst part is?" I feel so small and helpless, here where I should feel safe. I couldn't get a simple job done. "What's worst is not knowing what happened to her afterward. I mean, was trying to get the information out enough to hit her destiny? Was becoming Hellsworn enough for her fate? Did she hit both, or neither, or just the one? If she's going to Heaven, it could be days or centuries before I find out. If her soul's disbanded, reincarnated, going to Hell... I'll never know. So I can wait forever and still not be sure."

"We all make our choices," Mannie says. "You can't be responsible for any soul but your own. What she chose to do is done, and there's no changing it." He hesitates, trying to come up with the practical solution that'll make me feel better. I need to cheer up soon, or he'll be unhappy on my account, and I don't want that. "You can put in a request, in Heaven, that they let you know if she does come through. It might never come to anything, but if she were to arrive, they'd send word."

"I'll do that." I slip out of his lap, go to pacing around the room in a seven-point pattern that comes back to Mannie three times in the pattern. I'll do better next time. That's all I can do. "They're probably going to assign me a month of filing once they finish reviewing this. I should have known better than to make that much noise that close to Los Angeles."

"You should have let me know you were going there," Mannie says, watching me pace. He has a notebook at hand, but hasn't even opened it, only watches me. That's the sort of sign that fills me up with the fire I've been needing all day, burning away all the cold dried blood that's built up inside of me.

"You only would have worried," I say, and manage a smile. "Then you couldn't concentrate on work."

"You still should have told me," he says, as I pass by him in the orbit. Just like I knew he would. And I keep on moving on.


End file.
